Billion $ TV Empires, Dating Business Ideas, And More Elon

Episode 441: Sam Parr (@TheSamParr) and Shaan Puri (@ShaanVP) talk about two TV empires worth billions, dating business ideas, and Elon Musk's latest cringey acts. Click here to sign up for our event in Austin, TX on Saturday April 29th: mfmpod.com/atx Vote for MFM to win a Webby: mfmpod.com/webby Want to see more MFM? Subscribe to the MFM YouTube channel here. Check Out Sam's Stuff: * Hampton * Ideation Bootcamp * Copy That Check Out Shaan's Stuff: * Power Writing Course * Daily Newsletter ----- Links: *Homestead Heritage *Brene Brown: The Call To Courage *Love Is Blind *Raya App *The League * Do you love MFM and want to see Sam and Shaan's smiling faces? Subscribe to our Youtube channel. ------ Show Notes: (02:35) - Why you need eccentricities (04:40) - Chip and Joanna Gaines (22:35) - Oprah (38:15) - Would you enjoy fame? (45:15) - Dating business ideas (57:30) - Cringey Elon ----- Past guests on My First Million include Rob Dyrdek, Hasan Minhaj, Balaji Srinivasan, Jake Paul, Dr. Andrew Huberman, Gary Vee, Lance Armstrong, Sophia Amoruso, Ariel Helwani, Ramit Sethi, Stanley Druckenmiller, Peter Diamandis, Dharmesh Shah, Brian Halligan, Marc Lore, Jason Calacanis, Andrew Wilkinson, Julian Shapiro, Kat Cole, Codie Sanchez, Nader Al-Naji, Steph Smith, Trung Phan, Nick Huber, Anthony Pompliano, Ben Askren, Ramon Van Meer, Brianne Kimmel, Andrew Gazdecki, Scott Belsky, Moiz Ali, Dan Held, Elaine Zelby, Michael Saylor, Ryan Begelman, Jack Butcher, Reed Duchscher, Tai Lopez, Harley Finkelstein, Alexa von Tobel, Noah Kagan, Nick Bare, Greg Isenberg, James Altucher, Randy Hetrick and more. ----- Additional episodes you might enjoy: • #224 Rob Dyrdek - How Tracking Every Second of His Life Took Rob Drydek from 0 to $405M in Exits • #209 Gary Vaynerchuk - Why NFTS Are the Future • #178 Balaji Srinivasan - Balaji on How to Fix the Media, Cloud Cities & Crypto * #169 - How One Man Started 5, Billion Dollar Companies, Dan Gilbert's Empire, & Talking With Warren Buffett • ​​​​#218 - Why You Should Take a Think Week Like Bill Gates • Dave Portnoy vs The World, Extreme Body Monitoring, The Future of Apparel Retail, "How Much is Anthony Pompliano Worth?", and More • How Mr Beast Got 100M Views in Less Than 4 Days, The $25M Chrome Extension, and More

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Shaan Puri?

  Their TV show got canceled, but but Discovery gives them a whole network. Discovery's like, yeah, we're gonna make the Magnolia network all around you guys. And you guys are gonna create like hundreds of hours of like TV that's fixer upper content, cooking content, gardening content, like all the like house shit, right? And now they've built this empire, the kind of the bottom line of the whole, the headline of the story is this couple in a span of about 10 years has built a billion dollar brand around themselves.

• 0:30Sam Parr?

  It's that big?

• 0:31Shaan Puri?

  It's that big.

• 0:41Sam Parr?

  All right.

• 0:43Shaan Puri?

  What's up? They keep in what just happened. So before we hit record, it's like five, four, three, two, one. And Sam on three takes out a drink out of nowhere at three seconds left and just chugs it like tilts up. Not only just tilted up, squeezes the bottle like it's a it's a Kool-Aid or like a Capri Sun or something. And just chugging some carbonated drink. And then it goes to one and then he puts up the one symbol like, hold on, looks to the side, burps, flexes, recenters himself and is ready for the podcast. That was elite. That was an elite prep for a podcast.

• 1:23Sam Parr?

  Dude, I'm on top of it. I drink so many beverages and we had this Fast Company article written about the Hampton lunch. And the reporter in like the first paragraph called out how I left the interview to grab a root beer and I came back.

• 1:38Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, he skimmed the foam off the root beer like it was a Guinness.

• 1:44Shaan Puri?

  And then finished it. Held up the held up the one second sign to my lips, tell me the shush as he as he drained his root beer during the interview.

• 1:54Sam Parr?

  You know how men drink like IPAs and crap and then they look at the glass after they take a drink and try to analyze it? That's basically what I do at my Coke Zero.

• 2:01Shaan Puri?

  Dude, you should, you gotta have more weird quirks. Cause like you can't really be a billionaire founder if you're not super weird. So, you know, you gotta start picking up some things like, you know, oh, he only wears, you know, open toed sandals with socks and like, you know, he wears shorts with, you know, EMF protection on his pockets because he's worried about radiation. And what are the other weird things that you can do?

• 2:27Sam Parr?

  Well, I had a, I had carbonated water on tap for a while. That was pretty awesome. Uh, like I, I like only drink carbonated water, no normal water.

• 2:34Shaan Puri?

  Only sleeps during full moons.

• 2:36Sam Parr?

  Do you have a, you don't have any eccentricities, do you?

• 2:39Shaan Puri?

  No, that's why I'm broke, dude. I need, I need some of these before, you know, otherwise, uh, how can I be? How can I be the weird rich billionaire I'm trying to be?

• 2:49Sam Parr?

  We have, uh, Sean and I have these friends. I won't name who they are, but they're, they're young guys. And the minute that they got like a mild amount of success, like maybe 500,000 in revenue. They clearly had read like Naval's book on like charging by time or something like that. And then they sent all of their clients, it's a client services business, saying, we don't do meetings anymore. And, uh, that, they were leading into that eccentricity thing and I wanted to tell them, you guys are doing great, but you're not there yet.

• 3:22Shaan Puri?

  And their, and their biggest customer dropped them immediately. It was like, oh, yeah, well, we kind of needed to meet to talk about the, I get, okay, well, I guess we'll just find another vendor.

• 3:35Sam Parr?

  What it's all like, it's great. I love the attitude.

• 3:37Shaan Puri?

  You know, showed up to meetings with the shirt off and it was just like, well, that's cool. It's one way. It's one way to wear your shirt.

• 3:45Sam Parr?

  That, that, that's not the way that that particular client was willing to do it. So it's no longer their client, but that is our way. Yeah, that is definitely our way.

• 3:51Shaan Puri?

  They do have a nipple policy, unfortunately.

• 3:55Sam Parr?

  Yeah, they're not on board with the free the nip campaign, unfortunately.

• 3:59Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. Oh, we forgot to shout out, we're doing a live pod.

• 4:02Sam Parr?

  April 29th, that's a Saturday. If you live in Austin, or if you want to fly in, Sean and I, along with MFM guest Andrew Wilkinson are doing a live pod. So if you go to mfmpod.com, you'll see the details and you'll see tickets. Uh, we're going to do a live pod. We did this in Vancouver a couple of months ago. It's sold out. This one's going to sell as well. So if you're interested in hanging out with Sean, me, Andrew Wilkinson, as well as five, 600 other guests and fans of MFM, we're going to be there. So check it out, mfmpod.com and you'll see the, the banner up top where you can check out tickets.

• 4:39Sam Parr?

  Dude, we have a bunch of stuff. You have Chip and Joanna Gaines on there today.

• 4:43Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 4:43Sam Parr?

  And I went to Waco this weekend where they are from.

• 4:46Shaan Puri?

  Oh, no way.

• 4:47Sam Parr?

  And like saw some of their houses. Yeah.

• 4:49Shaan Puri?

  That's crazy. Okay. So you might know more about this than I do. Okay. So let me tee it up and then you tell me what you know about these people. So here's my, my trail of events and I'll put the disclaimer out there right now. If you actually know about them, that this is going to all sound very elementary. This is going to sound very, very beginner because I was a complete beginner about like, who are these people? I'm walking around in Target.

• 5:10Sam Parr?

  For the listener though, Sean doesn't know, like I, I told him what Coldplay was last week. Like he didn't know. He thought that was like baseball in the wintertime. He didn't know anything about like pop culture. So this is you learning out loud.

• 5:22Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, exactly. Like, uh, I, I still use a flip phone. So I, I was, I left my house. I go to Target and inside Target, there's this one section that my wife always goes into. And it's the only section in Target that looks like this, where there's a giant picture of this happy white couple. And it's their names. Like, it's like, oh, here's aisle one, two, three, four, five, Chip and Joanna Gaines, six, seven, eight, nine. So why do they have their own section? So I noticed that first and I thought, hmm, that's interesting. Who are these YouTubers? What, what, what is the, who are these people? Do they, is this the owner of Target? What, what is this? And so I noticed that and filed that away. Then I was talking to Aldone, who came on the pod, uh, or we talked about him on the pod, who

• 6:05Shaan Puri?

  runs Missouri Star Quilt Company, the big quilt company, a huge quilt company. And he did this thing where he started buying up a section of a town. He basically bought a town and started to build it out. He wanted to make it like, you know, quilt heaven. So basically a Mecca for where quilters would go as like a, as a pilgrimage to go and just like really indulge in their hobby. And he told me-

• 6:28Sam Parr?

  Disney World for grandmas.

• 6:30Shaan Puri?

  Disney World for, yeah, for, for your aunties. So, so he was like, all right, well. He goes, I go, does anybody else do this? And he goes, well, there's, there's Chip and Joanna Gaines thing in Waco. And I go, there they are again. Who are these people? And you know, fool me once, shame on me and fool me twice, shame on me. Finally, I'll look you up. And I looked them up and they got an incredible story. It sounds like you're pretty familiar with them. But um, he had told me one thing that kind of caught my attention. He goes,

• 6:57Sam Parr?

  It's, it shocks me by the way you don't know about these people. I mean, like in the Midwest and amongst like moms, like you're so California that you don't know about this. They've been in the game for like 10 years. Uh, but I don't know too much about them.

• 7:08Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, it's, you know, it's, it's quaint, but um, I, I, I looked them up. They, the YouTube videos are amazing, by the way. If you, if you watch the YouTube videos. So they own a part of town in Waco that they've just branded as their own. They bought these two abandoned, I think silos, like grain silos. And so they call it like whatever Siloville or whatever. And they have the Silobration at the end of the year where it's just like this huge party for themselves. So their brand Magnolia is the like everywhere in this little area. So they have the Magnolia Market where you go buy your stuff. And then they have their Magnolia Table Restaurant, which is served by the vegetables from Joanna's Garden. And then there's the Magnolia Other Thing. And then there's the Magnolia Other Thing.

• 7:49Shaan Puri?

  And it's just all them and they get about 2 million visitors a year just coming and making the pilgrimage to Waco, Texas, which is really the middle of nowhere for Texas. I lived in Texas and I never went to Waco. Like it was not even in my top 10 places to go in Texas. And so they have made Waco a destination. They literally have raised the housing prices in that area by like 24% because they have made it an attraction. And their story is kind of interesting. I don't know if you know their, their backstory. Do you know, do you know pretty well?

• 8:18Sam Parr?

  I don't.

• 8:19Shaan Puri?

  So they, uh, the story goes something like this. And again, I'm a beginner. So I'm doing the thing where you read the press release and you're like, oh, that's how they met. How, how fortunate. Or you know, like when you hear about somebody saying like, how'd you think of the idea? It's like, well, I saw a, a single mother struggling and I just decided that that would be my mission. It's like, no, dude, you read a report that said this market was growing and that's why you, you, you know, you started this business, but like, Here's the PR version of their story. They live in Waco, Texas. Chip, the guy, goes into this car repair shop that her dad owns. Sees a picture of her on the wall and decides I'm gonna marry that girl. Suspicious, but okay. Keeps going back to the car repair shop.

• 8:59Sam Parr?

  That, that, that story, it could, it could go a different route. It just totally, it's like, uh, it's like when you whispered someone's ear like, "I see you," versus like write it on their mirror when they're in the shower. You know what I mean? It's like, it's

• 9:14Sam Parr?

  context matters here. The ending of the story really makes it, uh, makes it okay, but it could go either way.

• 9:18Shaan Puri?

  She doesn't end up in a freezer. So, so he keeps going back and he eventually bumps into her, asks her out on a date. They go on a date, uh, whatever. They end up getting together. This is back in like 2003. And so he was doing house flipping and she was kinda like, I guess like working with the, doing like commercials for her dad's car, car repair place or whatever. And they get together and they decide, um, they, they don't have anything to their name, but they decide to try to, try to make something of this house flipping thing. She's like, oh, I could use my design sense. You're a contractor and let's, uh, so they move into this like 800 square foot house and they renovate it while they live there. End up flipping one, flipping two, flipping three. They, they start to, you know, successfully flip some houses in Waco, but still no big deal.

• 10:03Shaan Puri?

  Then a TV show from HGTV starts casting and they read about the, this husband and wife house flipper in, uh, in Waco, Texas. They said, well, Waco, we're kinda hoping for somebody in LA or, or New York or maybe Atlanta or something like that, but like, okay, whatever. Let's go down to Waco and meet him. And, uh, and he's got this like kind of big personality. He's, he's real outgoing and she's really good looking. And so it was like, plays well for TV. So they get their show on HGTV called Fixer Upper. And basically the show like from day one is a hit. And so they go from kinda husband and wife, small time house flippers, like very small houses that they're flipping in, in Waco to now on TV. And they, they're doing this and they do five or six seasons. They become very famous on, on HGTV.

• 10:48Shaan Puri?

  Show gets canceled. But what they did was they had built this uh this following and they had built they had this brand in mind that they had called Magnolia like they had opened up a retail store back in the day they closed it because it wasn't really going so well but they had this idea for this store called Magnolia so when the show ends they do two things they reopen Magnolia as a beautiful place in Waco and then secondly they go to the the just the channel Discovery Channel and they go and their TV show got canceled but but Discovery gives them a whole network Discovery is like yeah we're gonna make the Magnolia network all around you guys and you guys are gonna create like hundreds of hours of like TV that's fixer upper content

• 11:32Shaan Puri?

  cooking content gardening content like all the like house shit right and now they've built this empire the kind of the bottom line of the whole the headline of this story is this couple in a span of about 10 years has built a billion dollar brand around themselves

• 11:48Sam Parr?

  It's that big?

• 11:49Shaan Puri?

  It's that big so there's no real numbers that like have come out so like if you go look for their net worth or their revenue super hush hush which you know just makes those little hairs on my arms start to tingle a little bit I know I know when it's that hush hush that that means it's a lot bigger than you think especially because you see it like Target partnered with them to develop that line of goods in their store so like when Target it's not even like they got their brand into Target it's like Target came to them it's like let's make a brand that's like a big deal they have

• 12:21Sam Parr?

  Killers move in silence killers move in silence and you hear yeah so if you don't hear about it if you don't hear about it in TechCrunch you know it's doing good

• 12:27Shaan Puri?

  I thought you were gonna hit him with a geez and lasagna type of line type of no no not

• 12:32Sam Parr?

  Well you know I I think I've uh I've milked that one dry

• 12:36Shaan Puri?

  Dude it's like my mom when she was on the phone with like a customer service person and you're like A is an apple B is a bob whatever she goes K is a knife

• 12:47Shaan Puri?

  I just lost it I was like I don't think you understand how that works

• 12:55Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, it's like

• 12:55Sam Parr?

  That's hilarious.

• 12:56Shaan Puri?

  So Kay is, they operate like Kay is a knife.

• 12:59Sam Parr?

  I grew up on this street called Simpson and I would be like, uh, I'd be like, you know, my address is this, this, this Simpson, like OJ Simpson. And, uh,

• 13:09Sam Parr?

  it works.

• 13:11Shaan Puri?

  Anyways, their, their app that has their TV show network has like tens of thousands of reviews on it. So that means that that app is doing pretty well. And that's a paid, that's like their own version of Netflix, right? Like, that's like, kind of stunning. You never really see an influencer that has their own whole subscription network. And so they have the cookbooks, journals, retail stores, brand, uh, paint brand, uh, furniture brand. They have their TV show network. They got everything and this idea, and they have their own town, which gets 2 million visitors a year. Like if your website gets 2 million visitors a year, you're doing pretty okay. You're right. You're, you're out there. Let alone 2 million people making the pilgrimage to your small town in Waco to come buy shit from your stores. That's kind of impressive.

• 13:56Shaan Puri?

  I guarantee you that these people will end up billionaires off of this Magnolia brand. This Magnolia brand has to be worth high hundreds of millions, if not over a billion dollars already.

• 14:06Sam Parr?

  Have you been to Waco ever?

• 14:08Shaan Puri?

  No.

• 14:09Sam Parr?

  Dude, so I went to Waco this weekend because, and I'll tell a quick story, then we'll get back to this, but basically, last year I, I randomly came across this guy who had this new Airbnb. It was basically a, a piece of land that he built a lake on and he puts, and he built seven Airbnbs. I was so curious. I couldn't find him on social media. I call him up.

• 14:29Shaan Puri?

  He built a lake?

• 14:31Sam Parr?

  Yeah, he built a lake. Like it was like, uh, like a plot of land and they built, not a huge lake, more, more a pond is a better, is a better word to describe it, but, but it's, it's a lake, I guess. But I call him up and I go, tell me your story. He goes, well, I had a part, I, I was an accountant. I had my own small business for accounting. I just built this Airbnb thing. I think it's going to be really successful, but I really describe myself as an artist. I love to paint and play music. And right, right away I'm like, I'm in. Do you want to hang out? Start hanging out with them. He's part of this thing. I mentioned it called Homestead Heritage. It's this religion slash community. They, it's like all different parts of Christianity in it. And they believe in like sustainability and, and the weird part is they believe in craftsmanship.

• 15:12Sam Parr?

  So the way that they like find God is by like doing things with their hand and doing, doing it well. So anyway, this weekend I went and celebrated Easter at his church and like they like had a whole singing thing.

• 15:22Shaan Puri?

  Has this been around for a long time or did this, it was like a recently created religion? Okay.

• 15:28Sam Parr?

  Basically, the story is, is that one of the, the main guy, which is his wife's grandpa, I believe. Uh, her, the wife's, Isaac's, uh, wife's grandfather, lived in New York, was atheist, found God somehow and felt like the best way to like show that I love God is to like, just be excellent at everything I do and be kind to people, among other things, but that was basically it. For some reason they moved to Waco, they get 500 acres and they build a whole community on there. And then this guy Isaac now has built this Airbnb a few miles away. And he tweeted out his profits and in his first year of business, he did a million in profit. And so I went and I became friends with them and I went and hung out there and I drove through all, all through Waco. And basically in Waco, Waco's, sorry, Waco people, it's not nice.

• 16:12Sam Parr?

  Uh, it's not, it's not, it's, it's like objectively like a fairly rundown place as if maybe it was like an oil town. It feels like there was once something there and then now it's not. And when you drive through that area, you see like not nice house, not nice house, nice house. And I told him that and he goes, oh yeah, that's the Chip and Joanna's house. Like they like started here remodeling homes and you could distinctly tell which one is their brand. And it's, and, and so like, it's like basically like Isaac French, who like brings in all these people and Chip and Joanne, like, you know, way above him. But that's like my, my understanding of Waco at the moment.

• 16:47Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, there's these like, uh, these, these like kind of simplicity based, um, communities or religions or, or, or cultures where it's like, like I'm on their homepage right now. It says Homestead Heritage is an agrarian, craft-based, intentional Christian community. It stresses simplicity, sustainability, self-sufficiency, service and quality craftsmanship. And then there's literally like a video of a cow eating leaves and then like a boy stitching a baseball himself. Which yeah, like I never did.

• 17:17Sam Parr?

  Well, I was like, uh, Isaac showed me around. He goes, here, let me show you the orchard I planted last week, you know, and it's like, it has 200 apple trees. He's like, we did this for the community. Anyone could come take an apple. It'll be ready in like five years. And that's what he does instead of watching TV. So if I like, I'll be like, hey, have you seen this movie? He's like, no, I don't really watch movies. I'm planting trees.

• 17:34Shaan Puri?

  Not a whole lot of, by first million podcast listeners out there, probably.

• 17:38Sam Parr?

  There were a few. I think there was a few, but you know, they're more fans of like Johnny Appleseed than Sean Perry.

• 17:46Sam Parr?

  I don't think, you know what I mean? Like, uh, there, there are no like.

• 17:50Shaan Puri?

  Johnny Appleseed posters in their room.

• 17:54Sam Parr?

  Yeah. But, uh, dude, when I, so I've sold the story many times. I used to work for Mike Wolf from American Pickers. And that was where I first learned about like entertainment and business and things like that. But Mike Wolf was, American Pickers at the time was like the second most popular show on TV when I worked there. Number one was Pawn Stars and like number four was David Letterman, like to give you an idea. And, and we, I know, for real, that's the, that was the real rankings. And then I would be at the store and some days we would sell $30,000 of T-shirts at the store. And these like, were not nice T-shirts. They were just normal, like with the logo on it. We would sell like 10 grand worth of mugs. And so like these shows kill it. And what Mike did was he would film himself. Basically, the show is he would drive to Barnes, find old stuff, tell you the history about it,

• 18:37Sam Parr?

  buy it and then sell it. And he would, uh, he spent like four years driving around with a video camera, filming this, trying to pitch it. And then when he finally did pitch it, he got the production rights. Or I guess he kind of like what Rob Dyrdek did. And I think that's where the money is. And it sounds like that's what Magnolia did too.

• 18:54Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, exactly. The, I mean, the, the breadth of this empire is, is kind of stunning to me, right? It's like, uh, whether it's home goods, it's a restaurant, it's coffee books, it's the, it's the bakery, it's the TV show network, it's the Target line. It's like. And and their brand is like they're this relatable. You know, blue collar, you know, salt of the earth people. It's like, yeah, like they are, but they also have some part of them that's Rupert Murdoch. And they're they are flexing that Rupert Murdoch over the last, you know, 10 years. I wonder if they have like a manager or if they're just doing this all themselves.

• 19:31Sam Parr?

  Like Rupert Murdoch in Wrangler jeans, you know, like it's we're relatable, but we'll gut your heart out if we had to.

• 19:38Shaan Puri?

  Right. If succession was in denim.

• 19:41Sam Parr?

  Yeah. Uh, no, I dig these. I dig these people. The worst thing that would happen to them is a Johnny K plus eight. You remember Johnny K plus eight?

• 19:48Shaan Puri?

  Of course. How can I forget?

• 19:50Sam Parr?

  They're they're some of the first guys to get popular like in the reality TV world of TLC. And then like a divorce and it ends horribly, just like Honey Boo Boo, man, Honey Boo Boo. Same thing. It always ends horribly. So hopefully it doesn't end that way. I remember like seeing.

• 20:03Shaan Puri?

  If your shtick is just how many kids you can have. That is not.

• 20:10Sam Parr?

  You're gonna have a bad time.

• 20:11Shaan Puri?

  Sustainable. It's like, sometimes you see these YouTubers and they come out real hot because it's like, I'm buried alive with tarantulas. 10 million clicks. You're like, yo, but where to from here, son? Where are you gonna go with this? Like, this is not a sustainable path for you.

• 20:29Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I, uh, but I like these people. I mean, they seem like pretty like, I don't know, wholesome, but we'll see how how money impacts things.

• 20:37Shaan Puri?

  Well, you have Oprah on here and I think that Chip and Joanna Gaines, uh, and other people like them, like Brene Brown. They're kind of filling this Oprah gap, like Oprah left some big shoes to fill, I feel. And I I've been amazed by by the, do you know, do you follow Brene Brown very much?

• 20:54Sam Parr?

  Yeah, my wife is reading all her stuff and like, she's kind of killing it amongst like the empathy crowd.

• 20:59Shaan Puri?

  Vulnerability crowd. Yeah.

• 21:01Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 21:02Shaan Puri?

  Against those offense who are all about authenticity.

• 21:06Sam Parr?

  Yeah, the capital E empathy. Or like if I hear one, one more person say the N word nuance.

• 21:15Sam Parr?

  Like that's like that. That's the thing, man. It's nuance. It's empathy.

• 21:18Shaan Puri?

  A butt clutch a little there. I didn't know where you were going with that, with that joke. I was like, Sam, don't end it here, man. We've had a good run, but don't end it here.

• 21:27Sam Parr?

  Nuance.

• 21:29Shaan Puri?

  Have you seen her Netflix special?

• 21:31Sam Parr?

  No, no, I, I like her, but that's not my speed.

• 21:34Shaan Puri?

  It's a, it's a gotta watch.

• 21:37Sam Parr?

  It's that good?

• 21:37Shaan Puri?

  Is that good? So go watch her first Netflix special. It's some, you gotta watch it just because you've never seen anything like it. It's basically Tony Robbins, Oprah and a stand up comedian at the same time. Like she comes out on stage like a stand up comedian and she's funny without telling too many like jokes. Like it's not like set up punchline, but she's funny. But then she starts talking about vulnerability and herself. And then people in the crowd are crying and you're just like, what is that? What kind of event is this? You, it's like, you know, twister with my emotions. Like, I don't, I don't know what's going on. I got right leg. I'm sad and I got, left hand on empowered. I didn't know what was happening. It's kind of an incredible little live show that she's created.

• 22:21Shaan Puri?

  And I could, at first I was like, why would Netflix give a special to this person? I didn't even understand what that could be. But it's actually pretty, pretty well done for what it is. And I could see why she's so likeable, why she is so like relatable to people.

• 22:35Sam Parr?

  You quickly went from like, wow, to wow.

• 22:39Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 22:44Sam Parr?

  No, I'll, I'll watch her. Do you, uh, do you, can I tell you a little about Oprah? So we, we, we were going to talk about Oprah last time. We didn't really know what we were talking about, so I dug in a little bit.

• 22:52Shaan Puri?

  I guess the, the theme of this episode then is, uh, you know, one of the TV empires or female TV empire or something like that? I don't know. Let's keep, let's, let's see where we can go with this.

• 23:02Sam Parr?

  TV empires that everyone knows about that you and I are just discovering 20 years after the fact.

• 23:07Shaan Puri?

  Empires with empathy that the boys discover seven years after they, they're off air.

• 23:14Sam Parr?

  Capitalize both those Es. Uh, all right, I'll tell you a little bit about Oprah. So she started at 17 by, uh, doing beauty pageants. She won Miss Black Tennessee. At age 19, she got her first job at CBS station in, uh, Nashville. A few years later, she moved to Maryland and, uh, then back to Nashville. And eventually she was the first African American news anchor, uh, on TV. And that was in Nashville. She basically had an issue where she struggled to show objectivity because she couldn't really report the news because she was showing too much empathy and she was pretty casual. And at the time, like, this was like, hey Oprah, you gotta like, you know, keep it straight. You can't like express remorse or like show too much emotion. Be a robot. She was like, well, let's, uh, let's take this a different way.

• 23:58Sam Parr?

  So she created a show called People Are Talking and that aired originally in 1977. And she would improvise and she was casual. Kinda like you and I, one could say. Yeah, she was like the MFM of the seventies. Um, and by the end of the decade, so after like three or four years, she was beating Phil Donahue in the local ratings and Phil Donahue was God. Uh, so he was like the man in charge. So eventually she keeps doing that for a little while longer, but in 1986, so about 10 years after starting that, she gets her own show. It's called The Oprah Winfrey Show and she, along with a, a couple of outside investors, established her own production company called Harpo Productions. Harpo is Oprah spelled backwards. And at 32 years old, she became the first black woman to have a nationally syndicated

• 24:42Sam Parr?

  show and she still owns 80% of that production company. And all along the, the way she started like innovating, innovating. So in 1996, she created the, uh, her, her book club, which made 130 million in sales in year one and arguably set the groundwork for this like massive influencer industry that we have. Then in 98, she co-founded the Oxygen Media Group, which has programming towards all types of, uh, shows, mostly towards women. She launched Oprah Magazine. She had a radio show. Uh, in 2010, the Oprah show ended after 24 years and she had, you know, all the best guests leading up till then. 2011, she launched, uh, own Oprah Winfrey Network. And then all along.

• 25:23Sam Parr?

  Has been doing all types of stuff. So for example, in 2015, she bought 10% stake in Weight Watchers. And then the stock six Xed like within a year or two of that happening. In 2008, she sold most of her stake to own to Discovery. And she's done a ton of interesting stuff between now and then, but listen to her empire. So she has the Oprah Winfrey Show, which had over 20,000, 28,000 guests, giving away 570 cars, had five presidents on. She got 20,000 fan letters. The finale had 16.4 million views. She also owns Harpo still to this day. They've collectively, it's done $2 billion in profits. It made a couple of movies as well, including The Color Purple, Beloved and Selma. They have 200 employees in Chicago.

• 26:09Sam Parr?

  The own, so the her network, Oprah Winfrey Network, it started with $100 million in funding. Eventually she sold most of the stake, but she's still CEO of that. She has Oprah Magazine, which in the first year did 140 million in revenue just from subscriptions. And then she has Oprah and Friends, which is a XM radio contract or show where she got $55 million in the first three years. She's invested in Weight Watchers, True Food Kitchens, which is basically a restaurant that has 42 locations. She helped start a food science startup backed by Oprah, Katy Perry and a few others. That has a billion dollar in valuation and she also is a big investor in Oatly.

• 26:52Sam Parr?

  Then, and this is finally, she has a $45 million estate in California, a $14 million one in Washington. In Colorado, she has 60 acres for 14 million. In Hawaii, she has over 1,000 acres and she has basically her net worth grew from at age 32, she got her first million. At 41, 340 million, 97 at the age of 43, 550 million. And at the age of 48, she became a billionaire. So that's Oprah's story. Super fascinating. I mean, she's been in the game forever, it seems, and I think she's what 60 something now and still killing it. I didn't realize she was the CEO and like active in all this. I thought she was more so like a face, but I think she's actually not, you know, not just a face. But it seems like she's like actually like a like a mogul, a tycoon.

• 27:35Shaan Puri?

  Right. You know what's, uh, one thing that stands out when we talk about these is that there is this like flywheel that happens. Once you become a certain level of famous.

• 27:46Shaan Puri?

  It's almost like, uh, you know, that, that graph that's like going viral, the, the fuck around and find out graph. It's basically like fuck around and find out, but the positive version. It's like, you could kind of like, if Oprah was like, here's Oprah's maple syrup. Here's Oprah's, um, you know, like new line of spoons. Here's Oprah's, uh, you know, new board game. Like, what? Does it really matter at this point? It'd be like, her board game does 50 million in sales. Her syrup is the number one syrup in the, in the country right now. Like, it's kind of at that point, you just choose. And because so much trust and distribution has been built up. And I have a friend who this week, I can't say the details, but they went to a very famous person.

• 28:27Shaan Puri?

  They went to a very famous person and they said, they, they had a business idea. They said, hey, uh, my, our friend has a, has a background in a certain industry. And said, hey, famous person, you should be doing something in that industry. Let me walk to you. Show up at your door, knock at your door and say, here's a full business plan of exactly how you would dominate in this category. So they go, they fly out, knock on the door. First they don't meet the famous person, famous person sends a, a manager to them, sends a.

• 28:58Sam Parr?

  But by the way, are they, are they like A-list famous?

• 29:01Shaan Puri?

  They're super famous. Yes. Super, super famous.

• 29:03Sam Parr?

  Got it. Okay.

• 29:04Shaan Puri?

  A-list famous. And so they go to them and first they get hit with a manager and they say, they're trying to like, look over the manager's head, be like, hey, is a famous, I just wanted to talk to, just hoping to get a word in with the famous person. Can you get out of the way? And they're like, no, no, no, you have to get through this wall first. They talked to the manager first. They say, hey, look, here's my background. I've been super successful in this industry. I think you guys could crush it in this industry. Why don't, can I meet the famous person now and tell them the idea? They said, no, no, no, tell me the idea. I'm in charge of this. I said, okay, here, here's the idea. And then the person says, manager says, that's a good idea. Okay. Cool. And, um, then they get the meeting with the, the famous and, and the whole time they were told, hey, uh, you fly in on Monday. You'll meet with the famous person sometime this week. Just hang out in the hotel.

• 29:46Shaan Puri?

  Just be here, which is a pretty big time move to try, to try to pull on somebody to not give you a time, but say, hey, we'll, we'll hold this walkie talkie. Would you hear me? Put your pants on, get ready, the meeting's happening. But I can't tell you what it's gonna be.

• 30:02Sam Parr?

  Like, they've got a special calendar in Google. Everything ends in ish, but it's, you know, Monday ish, you know? Like, it's all ish.

• 30:10Shaan Puri?

  Right, you're given a window and you better be prepared during that window to strike. Okay, so end up getting the meeting with the, with the famous person. Famous person comes in, explains the whole idea. Famous person likes the idea, but also has a bunch of their own ideas, of course, as famous people do. And so I asked my friend later, I said, uh, so what happened? And the response was this, they go, well, I'm pretty sure we convinced famous person that they should do this and do this with us. And I'm pretty sure they convinced me that I should not do this with them.

• 30:46Shaan Puri?

  And I thought that was just a hilarious takeaway. And I was, I was like, okay, well, why? They said, well, you know, they have all their own ideas. They go, honestly, everything they're trying to do in this space probably won't work. Like, I think they're going about it the whole wrong way, but they'll probably end up being successful anyways. That's the crazy thing about this. Like, uh, their margin for error is so large and they can kind of do anything and still have it work because their brand, their celebrity, their distribution, their trust and loyalty in their audience is so large that you can kind of mess up eight out of 10 things and still get it, get it to work eventually. Um, whereas most startups, most businesses don't have that margin for, for error. And so I don't know what the big takeaway is, it's kind of a no duh, but it's, uh,

• 31:30Shaan Puri?

  if you're mega, mega famous, it's not hard at that point to, to do the empire thing because, uh, it's like, uh, what was his name? The guy, uh, Mois from Native, how he, when he was selling his company and they're like, you sell just deodorant. You know, you're asking for this big valuation. He goes, yeah, because, uh, do you know how to write the word native on a bottle of shampoo? Do you know how to write the word native on a, on a bottle of toothpaste? Cool, that's your expansion plan. Like, I left a lot of room for this to grow. If you could still write the word native on something, it will work. And that's, that's how I feel about these mega celebrity brands, which is like, if you, if you put my face on something, it's gonna work.

• 32:07Sam Parr?

  So let's, let's put this in, in a very realistic context. So you and I have that minus or no, divided by a hundred. So we're Oprah divided by a thousand, whatever it is, but we, we have a very small taste of it. And we also have friends, you know, like the Tim Ferriss's of the world and, and whoever else who have it, you know, times 10 or 20 for us and are in this like potentially billion dollar space. There's been three things I think that I've narrowed it down to that make this empire strategy. Um, that hold, hold me back. And, and I imagine someone like Tim, who's a perfectionist or someone like that holds them back. Number one is reputational risk. So putting your name on crap products and then how on earth can you actually like

• 32:50Sam Parr?

  track it all to make sure that you're not, you're not putting your name on bad, on bad products that you actually stand by. And so because of that, it's almost like you have to pick and choose. But then there's other people like Richard Branson that put, you know, virgin on everything. And it kind of has seemed like it worked out. Uh, so that's like the big thing. Number two is finding people who you can trust. When you have five or 10 or 30 different things going on, you need really trustworthy people. And even if it's your family, even if it's your brother and your cousin, people can screw you. And like, you have to really stay on top of it. And you have to find a partner who's good enough to like really have your back. Like even my accountant, or I imagine if like your lawyer or your accountant, and every once in a while you're like, is this person actually thinking

• 33:33Sam Parr?

  of me? Or how are they incentivized here? And who's actually making the right decision? That's actually exhausting. And I think in, in, in quite hard. Um, and then the final thing is like, do they want the headache of that? So like a Joe Rogan, uh, he just like, no F this, like I'm on my island here. I have what I need. I don't want to put my name on anything. Uh, screw that. I, I don't need anything and I want to keep things small and tight. And so those are kind of the three things I think prevent like empires from being built like this.

• 34:02Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I think that's true. Um, so say, say that, say the, the first one again, what was the first one? Do you remember?

• 34:08Sam Parr?

  Reputational risk, having people that you can trust, and then just like not wanting more headache.

• 34:12Shaan Puri?

  And here's the counter to each. Okay. Reputational risk, putting your, your name on crap products. Do you, uh, have you drank Prime?

• 34:18Sam Parr?

  Uh, once I tried it. It's fine.

• 34:20Shaan Puri?

  It's fine. It's also the fastest growing drink in the country right now and it's fine. And I think that that's the the counter to that is. Yes, you can't put it on a crap product or do something that would, you know, hurt people or do something like that. Like, you know, something, nothing, nothing on the sort of terrible end of the register. But there's a lot of leeway between the best product in the market and it's fine. And you just got to fall somewhere there, right? It's like a, it's like you're playing golf and the fairway is so wide. You really got to screw it up if to hit to hit it out of bounds. And that's how I feel with these products like is Kylie's lip product, the best product on the market. I have no idea is, um, you know, for most of these products, I can't tell you that Conor McGregor's whiskey

• 35:03Shaan Puri?

  or the Rock's tequila is, uh, is anything better than fine. They might just be.

• 35:08Sam Parr?

  You're saying there had, there's got to be a threshold.

• 35:10Shaan Puri?

  There's a threshold and the threshold is pretty goddamn low. So I think the reputational risk is is a little bit less than than what I, what I think a lot of people would worry about. Uh, the rest is true. It can become a headache and you do have to find competent people to to run them. The good thing is when you have that brand, it's like prime, the prime didn't start by Logan Paul and KSI. Saying let's create a drink, let's go to the flavor house and create a formulation. There were some entrepreneurs who approached them that said, we do this. We've done this at, you know, medium scale. With you guys, we could go super scaled and we will take care of everything. You guys take the cut, you guys help us with the promotion. But like, look, we come with this track record and I think that's what happens for most of these celebrities. Is there approached by people with track records?

• 35:54Shaan Puri?

  Like even the example I was just giving, somebody with a track record came and said, I know this industry. I've done this before with your brand and your distribution. We could do this again in a big way. Um, and I think those opportunities just come knocking at your door. So it's not even like, where do I go find somebody great? It's like, can I filter? Can I just like recognize great when it shows up, shows up at my door is really the, uh, the question for most of these people.

• 36:18Sam Parr?

  Do you think you would enjoy that type of fame like Chip and Joanna?

• 36:25Shaan Puri?

  No. Um, not only would I not enjoy it from a like, oh, I don't want to get bothered when I'm out and about with my kids and stuff like that, but also I more than that is I don't enjoy what it takes to get there. And that's actually what goes like, that's actually the most important question in business. I was talking to Ben Levy about this the other day. We were talking about business ideas.

• 36:46Sam Parr?

  Earlier, earlier I asked you this a while ago and you go, there's a price to pay. I ain't willing to pay it.

• 36:52Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, exactly. Know the price and then decide if you're, if you're going to pay it. When we were talking about business ideas, it was like, oh, do we like this idea or this idea? And the easy thing to do, I think everybody gets this wrong is like, I love basketball. So I want to do a basketball based idea, or I love, I'm really passionate about like helping people. So I'm going to do this healthcare startup, whatever it may be. And they think that their enjoyment of the, of the thing is going to be based on the product or category that they're in. But in reality, most of the time you spend when you're an entrepreneur is trying to grow or sell, is trying to get more customers and grow, grow the actual business. And so you're

• 37:32Sam Parr?

  Not playing basketball.

• 37:33Shaan Puri?

  Your day to day experience is actually about selling and trying to grow. And what ends up happening is that some ways are more enjoyable or suit you better than others. So for some people, they love Facebook ads or they love SEO. And for some people, they love phone calls. And for some people, they love high level business deals, enterprise sales, uh, where you're nurturing a long relationship for a long period of time. And the big mistake people make is they think, oh, I'm creating a basketball related startup. What they don't realize is that the only way for that business to grow is through enterprise sales. And they hate enterprise sales or they're unwilling to go and sell to these facility managers of NBA stadiums, or they're unwilling to sell to blah, blah, blah. And they think they're in the basketball business, but they're in the enterprise

• 38:18Shaan Puri?

  sales business because 90% of their day to day work and they're, they're the challenge that they're faced with and the, the, the stuff they have to do. The whether they're selling basketballs or ping pong balls or books, it doesn't matter. It's the the sales channel, the sales process is where you're going to spend most of your time. So you got to figure out which sales process do I like the most, or at least tolerate the best? And then find a business that uses that sales process.

• 38:46Sam Parr?

  Right.

• 38:47Shaan Puri?

  I think that is like a, I wish somebody had told me that earlier because I got tripped up with this for many, many years. And when I look back, I'm like, oh, I just really like growing things through Facebook ads. It's like, it's to me, it's way better than these other ones. And so like, so I have a list, I'm like, my favorite sales channel is just mention it on the podcast. It couldn't be anything easier than that. Like, if I could just tell people what I think about this product and then they go buy it because they already trust me and they like me. And we have enough listeners to this product, to this podcast. That is the number one easiest sales channel, most pleasurable. So if I can think of a business that works in that, fantastic. Number two for me is Facebook ads. Why? Because I don't have to talk to anybody, I sit behind a computer, I set up the budget and when it works, I just scale it up with the push of a button.

• 39:32Shaan Puri?

  I don't have to hire more salespeople, I don't have to like go do something new. You could take one image that works or one video, one 10 second video that works in Facebook ads and put millions of dollars of spend behind it and make multiple millions more off that ad. I love that. I love that model, I like that I can look at the dashboard, see a number and know what to do. I, yes, that's like my number two. And my number three is cold emails because I'm good at cold emailing and it's kind of a pain in the ass, but I've done it before. I can train people to do that of how to cold email in order to generate customers. Those are my three favorites. Everything else, I don't like as much. And so when I think of an idea, it's got to fall in that top three.

• 40:09Sam Parr?

  Have you, so we had, I guess technically the hustle kinda was enterprise sales. I mean, we had six, maybe once or twice, we had seven figure deals and that's like a long process. I wasn't allowed to go to those meetings because like, I remember like I had to go and buy like brown shoes and like tight jeans and like tuck my shirt in and like a certain way. And I was like, dude, like, I'm Todd, huh? Nice to meet you. Uh, like, it wasn't for me.

• 40:33Shaan Puri?

  You got all the details wrong, just a tank top tucked in, some khakis, which are tucked into some brown shoes.

• 40:39Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 40:40Shaan Puri?

  A giant tunnel you've created with tucking everything in.

• 40:43Sam Parr?

  Right before the meeting, they're like, Sam, the, the buttons are supposed to be in the front.

• 40:48Shaan Puri?

  Like, ah, that was a breakaway.

• 40:53Sam Parr?

  Yeah, so I was like, was learning as I, as I went. But as the owner of a company that had enterprise sales, it is awesome. Because what I didn't realize, there's this amazing thing that I learned, which is that sales teams can create demand. So even if your product, our product was great, but even if your product is okay, if you have a good sales team, you can truly create demand. And I didn't understand that until like year two or three of like having a team like this. I'm like, oh my God, this is how the world works. Because most big companies, they just have a certain amount of budget. They have to spend it on something. And if you just get in with them and you wine and dine them and you, they like you, half the time, the product doesn't even matter. They just have to spend it. Otherwise, next year, they won't have the same budget and they don't have the same budget, they don't have a job.

• 41:38Sam Parr?

  So, and you can like that or you can not like it. Frankly, I don't love that, that that's like the truth. But if you can make it work, it's pretty amazing. And I like learned that the hard way while running a company like this.

• 41:49Shaan Puri?

  And if you don't know which one you like, your best bet is to go get exposure to a bunch of them. So go, go try your hand. Do like a six month rotation where you're basically like, okay, how do I do this enterprise sales thing? How do I do cold calling? How do I do Google ads? How do I do these different things and figure out which one of these appeals to you? Because once you do that, then, then you could kind of pick and choose. I know most, most people, and I would think you, you would find this to be true. Most successful people we know, they don't really hop around sales channels that much. It's like, if they're good at-

• 42:21Sam Parr?

  Find one thing and you, and you kill it.

• 42:22Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, they, oh, they're good at SEO. They just do SEO four different times and four different flavors. Oh, you're good at Facebook ads? You do Facebook ads for one business, then another business, then another business. If you're good at enterprise sales, you just figure out, you know, which businesses to plug into that over time. And they kind of make a career out of really understanding one growth process. Because being a master at any growth thing is, is super, super valuable.

• 42:47Sam Parr?

  Um, do you want to talk about Hustle GPT, GPT three? Or do you want to go to another topic?

• 42:54Shaan Puri?

  Um, which, uh, let's do some quicker ones. Cause I feel like we did a long, long, long winded thing. So I have, I have a couple of quick ones.

• 43:02Sam Parr?

  Tell me.

• 43:03Shaan Puri?

  Okay. So I'm going to give you my two, uh, bad dating ideas. And by the way, I'd like to, to put another drunk ideas on the books to, uh, to just put that out there. This would have been in my drunk ideas thing, but we, we don't have it scheduled. So I'm just going to do it sober. So, um, two bad dating ideas. Um, number one, do you watch the TV show Love is Blind?

• 43:24Sam Parr?

  Sarah does, so it's on my TV all the time.

• 43:28Shaan Puri?

  Okay, good. So you know the premise.

• 43:29Sam Parr?

  My wife have like the exact same TV stuff. Like for the listener, Sean and Sarah are texting about Bachelor or Bachelorette, whatever it's called.

• 43:37Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 43:38Sam Parr?

  Or no, what do you guys talk about? The challenge.

• 43:39Shaan Puri?

  The challenge, but also these other shows. So, um, so Love is Blind is this like sensation show on Netflix, which is basically like, you get a bunch of single people together, they're in these rooms, they can't see each other. So you kind of speed date, you date, you date other people, but you never get to see them. So you're only supposed to, you know, fall in love with their personality. And then after you choose who you like the best on their personality, then you get to see them and you get to see what happens. Okay. So.

• 44:04Sam Parr?

  And don't you like get married at the end?

• 44:06Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, well, of course to, to like any great story, it needs stakes. And so they raise the stakes by saying, you don't just get to pick, say, oh, I like Sam the best. I mean, I want to see him now. It's like, in order to see him, you must get engaged, blind and get married four weeks later. So they like, you know, that's how they make it a TV show.

• 44:20Sam Parr?

  And some people walk, walk on the altar.

• 44:23Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 44:23Sam Parr?

  You have to decide at the altar.

• 44:24Shaan Puri?

  A lot of people, when they see the other person, they're like, oh, hey, it's so good to see you. Like they're just like, oh man, like I imagined something different. And now I'm stuck with you. And now I look like an asshole because I fell in love with your personality and I fell out of love with your face. Uh, but they can't say that, so they have to find some other excuse.

• 44:42Sam Parr?

  One guy on the show was like, they're trying to get an idea of how, uh, how they looked. And they go, so I'm pretty, the guy was like, I only weigh a hundred and 50 pounds. Yes. Could I give you a piggyback ride?

• 44:54Shaan Puri?

  No, no, he goes, he goes, it was so smooth the way you did it. And by smooth, I mean terribly, he goes, I love to go to music festivals. She's like, me too. He goes, uh, music festivals, you know, I, uh, I usually put my girlfriend up on my shoulders. Um, do you think I'd be able to do that? What's?

• 45:15Sam Parr?

  Did she catch it?

• 45:16Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, she was like, uh, like, no, that's my worst nightmare is a guy like struggling to lift my body weight. So she was just like, what the hell? But, uh, and then-

• 45:27Sam Parr?

  What size rowboat do we need?

• 45:28Shaan Puri?

  On this, on this season, there's one guy, she, they fell in love and then they meet and he's just, he's not, he's not bad looking or whatever, but he's, does really intense eye contact. Like the guy doesn't blink and she's like, you're gonna never known this from behind the wall. And so she's like, haha, like, how come you're not looking away? And he's like, what? What do you mean? I am blinking. And she's like, no, like, please look away. It's like so uncomfortable to watch. So anyways, great show. I think somebody should take this show on the road. Literally, I think somebody should do a, I think the show, but if not the show, then somebody should spin this off. Do a Love is Blind tour where you go city to city and people pay to be a part of the experiment.

• 46:12Shaan Puri?

  So people pay to actually like do the show themselves. I also think you should do a podcast version of Love is Blind. Because podcasts is audio only, so it's already no visual. So you could have two people talking and you could sort of edit and cut this together and make a, a pod version of Love is Blind. So I think people could take this concept of this dating show or it could be other dating shows too, but make a, make a tour out of it, make a show out of it where it's going from city to city and people get to participate, almost like American Ninja Warrior. Some people get to participate and other people get to watch the, the show going down. And, uh, I think that these things should generate a lot of money ticket wise because Netflix has done the hard work of educating the market. And so, once you get that education in the market, now somebody should go to them and get the license.

• 46:57Shaan Puri?

  Like we talked about this with, uh, kids cartoons like-

• 46:59Sam Parr?

  Or they can just call it like, uh, love with poor eyesight.

• 47:05Shaan Puri?

  Fuzzy love.

• 47:08Sam Parr?

  Yeah. I forgot my glasses, love.

• 47:11Shaan Puri?

  So, so like people did this with the cartoons.

• 47:13Sam Parr?

  That was a, that was a three out of ten.

• 47:14Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, it's okay. I gave you a laugh to try to like, you know, smooth it over.

• 47:20Shaan Puri?

  But like kids cartoons like Blippi or Cocamelan, there's these companies that go and they license the rights to create the Cocamelan live tour or the Blippi live tour. And I've gone to these and I did a segment on the pod about these. These things make millions of dollars a year. Yeah. Well, the, every parent loves it. It's like, you can't really, there's not many places you could take a tiny kid that's like kid friendly, but this is perfect because they already love these cartoons on YouTube. And so I'm willing to pay 50 bucks a ticket times four. So I pay 200 bucks, then I buy the merch, then I buy the snacks because of course my kids want snacks. And you know, we go there and we've dropped 400, $500 by the, by the end of it, or you know, something like that. And so these, these shows can make a lot of money. And so I think somebody could do this with other television shows, including the dating shows.

• 48:04Sam Parr?

  That's not a bad idea at all. Well, that's, that's a great idea. You should come up with something worse.

• 48:09Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. You should have seen an average person try to explain that idea.

• 48:13Shaan Puri?

  You would have laughed them out of the room. Okay. Here's my second.

• 48:15Sam Parr?

  Love is blind on tour. Ah, even that sounds all right.

• 48:19Shaan Puri?

  So my second, uh, bad dating, uh, idea. Okay. So you've heard about this like dating app, Raya. You know about this app?

• 48:26Sam Parr?

  It's basically a dating app originally for famous people, but now it's like dating apps for people with like verified on Instagram or something.

• 48:34Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. I don't even really understand it. I think somebody needs to come over the top on Raya and make the even more elite dating app. So I'm calling it Daddy. Here's what Daddy is. So Daddy, Daddy or Zaddy, you know, we're, we're debating it internally. So Daddy is an app where for a guy to be on Daddy, actually, let me first start with the girl side. Okay. For a woman to be on Daddy, she's got to basically audition or apply. And we're only accepting the top 1% of eligible women. So this is beautiful, but not just beautiful, smart, but not just smart. You gotta be living in a, in a town, a big city so that, you know, you're available to be, to be, to be, uh, you know, reached to

• 49:18Shaan Puri?

  be dated. So beautiful, smart, top 1%, maybe even top 0.1% of applicants get in, more, more elite than Harvard. And then on the guy's side, you gotta pay $25,000 a year to be on the app. So that's the app idea. 5,000 men. If you can get 5,000 men who have the money to drop 25 Gs on their dating app, they get access to this elite pool of women who want access to this rich group of men. And it is what it is. That's our slogan. It is what it is.

• 49:54Shaan Puri?

  Is it right? Nah, but it is what it is. Okay? So it is what it is. It's rich guys with beautiful, smart women. And the business model is if we can get 5,000 guys to pay us this amount, that's $100 million a year business. Does that sound like something you might be interested in?

• 50:13Sam Parr?

  So when I was studying like for Hampton to launch Hampton, I was like curious about communities. And there's a bunch of, a lot of people are like, you should charge like 100 grand a year. And the reason being is there's a bunch of communities out there where the whole thing of making it elite and community is just, can you pay the money?

• 50:30Shaan Puri?

  Yes.

• 50:31Sam Parr?

  And I was thinking about that and I'm like, first, like the audacity and second, if you can get,

• 50:37Sam Parr?

  my first question is,

• 50:38Shaan Puri?

  How dare you?

• 50:41Sam Parr?

  Who are you? But if you can get past that, how amazing is that where your whole business is just, if you could pay it, you're probably good. So we'll just, uh, we'll, we'll be, we'll, we're happy to be that middleman and check it out. And so there's this app called The League. If you know what The League is, it's a dating app. It started when we were in San Francisco by this woman named Amanda Bradford, who I'm friends with here in Austin. She sold it recently to, what's the big, the big company? IAC, who owns like Match and Bumble and, or not Bumble, Tinder. And what Amanda was getting started, she was, or the, the league kind of took off. And so I don't, you probably don't know this.

• 51:20Shaan Puri?

  And it was like Ivy League was the premise, right? It was like only.

• 51:22Sam Parr?

  It was like Ivy League. But then she, one day she was like, how hard can I push this? And so right now, The League costs, I believe it's either $499 or $999. So it's either $499 or $999. It's one of those two. And the reason being is that's the highest price per month that you can charge on Apple's, uh, on the Apple Store.

• 51:45Shaan Puri?

  It's 399 per month. Uh, sorry. Yeah. $399 per month.

• 51:51Sam Parr?

  So yeah, it's the highest that you could possibly charge. And she goes, screw it. That's what it's going to cost to get premium features. And people like at her, I think her team was like, this is crazy. We can't do this. No one will do this. And it crushed it. And IAC came to her and they're like, we want to buy you because how on earth are you able to charge this? And I imagine in her head, she was like, well, it was actually pretty easy. I just added an extra nine at the end of.

• 52:15Shaan Puri?

  Actually, you're right. It was the highest year is called investor. It's member 299, owner 399, investor $999 and 99 cents.

• 52:26Sam Parr?

  Yeah. Yeah. It's like, it's like, there's like an episode in South Park where they come up with this like new MBA. And they're like, look, I don't make up the rules. I just think them up and write them down. You can't argue with me. I didn't make up the rules. And it's like, well, how'd you increase pricing so much? Well, I just clicked that button nine and we added, we made it instead of 999, we made it 900 or instead of 99.99, it was 999. So anyway, it's killed it. And so I actually think that there are a lot of interesting opportunities in the market where you can just charge way more. And it feels very weird. That's the business model.

• 53:00Shaan Puri?

  And actually, now that I think about it, $25,000 a year, that was complete small boy stuff. And I apologize to the entire audience. This needs to be a hundred grand a year. This has to be a hundred grand a year. And guess what? We only need a thousand members now. We only need a thousand guys who are willing to drop a hundred grand in order to get access to the most. And in fact, you know what we're going to do? We're going to take a portion of that money and we're going to pay some women to be on this app. We're going to say, look, you are so great. You were casted onto this and you are going to be paid to be a part of this network. Because we want to blur the lines between prostitution and legal dating.

• 53:40Sam Parr?

  Oh my God.

• 53:42Shaan Puri?

  It is what it is, as we say.

• 53:45Sam Parr?

  God bless you. Maybe this will work, but yeah.

• 53:48Shaan Puri?

  But I think there's, there needs to be more apps that do this, that go over the top with it like.

• 53:54Sam Parr?

  I agree.

• 53:54Shaan Puri?

  Basically find the theoretical max of, of, of, of what, what the market will bear or what, uh, what people actually want to do. Right? Like, what, what is the actual behavior people want? And what are they willing to do? And it's usually more than you think. Or more than, you know, sounds, sounds reasonable. Like what, what if you just took an unreasonable approach to the same thing? What would you do differently is a, is a question you can ask about really any business.

• 54:20Shaan Puri?

  Like there's these guys, they created this thing called the unreasonable institute back in the day. And I loved it.

• 54:24Sam Parr?

  Is that real?

• 54:24Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, it was a great, it was a great idea. It was called the unreasonable institute. And it was for, I just love the name because I, I love the entire premise, which was. What good has been come from just taking a reasonable approach to something? If you're trying to make any big shit happen, you're trying to do anything, change the way anything works, you know, like create a new system or improve something or innovate. You know, in a way, by definition, you're going to do something slightly unreasonable.

• 54:47Shaan Puri?

  And so.

• 54:47Sam Parr?

  Is this called the unreasonable group?

• 54:49Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, it was called the unreasonable institute. Then they had the unreasonable like tour where they like. They like got a cruise ship and went into international waters. And then they did a bunch of these. Now it's probably called, this is like 10 plus years ago. So, yeah.

• 55:03Sam Parr?

  That's so funny.

• 55:03Shaan Puri?

  It's probably.

• 55:04Sam Parr?

  Well, there's a thing called unreasonable group and it's the unreasonable collective is an international community of sophisticated investors. We pool, we pool capital as a community and co-invest in world class. But then there's the unreasonable institute, which is a fast track program to give altruistic entrepreneurs skills and funding to affect a large scale change.

• 55:21Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I think that's the one.

• 55:22Sam Parr?

  One sounds maybe a little, yeah, the first one maybe sounds cooler though, but, uh, uh, that's cool. I like that name. Speaking of unreasonable, you want to wrap this up by talking one thing, Elon Musk?

• 55:33Shaan Puri?

  Okay.

• 55:34Sam Parr?

  Did you see what he did? Uh, so you see the Twitter thing?

• 55:38Shaan Puri?

  Well, which, which Twitter thing? I feel like every day there's Elon Musk Twitter thing.

• 55:41Sam Parr?

  Yeah, that's. Where he blurred out the W?

• 55:44Shaan Puri?

  Oh, yeah.

• 55:45Sam Parr?

  Oh, OK. This is news.

• 55:47Shaan Puri?

  No, I saw this. I saw this. This is, explain this. This is dumb.

• 55:51Sam Parr?

  There's this, there, there's this thing in the UFC called, if you win, so basically the UFC and all about fighting, it has weight divisions. And every once in a while, someone like Conor McGregor or someone else comes along and they achieve greatness. And they earn what's called the champ champ status, meaning they have a champ, uh, they're the champion in one weight division. And then while having that belt, they also gain a few pounds and go up and win another belt. It's unheard of. In my opinion, Elon is the champ champ. He has amazing products. He's one of the best entrepreneurs out there. He's the champion. He's also the most cringiest. He's the champ champ right now. Uh, he does whatever the fuck he wants. That's what champ champs do.

• 56:31Sam Parr?

  And recently, like last night, he tweeted out that there was a dispute with the landlord saying you can't like alter the sign or something like that. So he took like a piece of white sheet or paper or something and he blurred out the W. So now Twitter, the sign, it's a huge sign when you live in San Francisco. I lived a block away from it. It says titter. And it's the most cringe thing I've ever seen. Why on earth would he do that? I love a good troll, but that's not like funny. It just makes like people like, look, I like trolling. I love punching up, uh, but this is like, uh,

• 57:07Shaan Puri?

  This is punching yourself in the face.

• 57:09Sam Parr?

  I like making people uncomfortable. This is the bad type of uncomfortable.

• 57:13Shaan Puri?

  Go to his Twitter, uh, right now. Do you see what his name is on Twitter right now? Cause you thought that was the cringiest thing he's done in the last 48 hours. Well, he's one upped himself.

• 57:24Sam Parr?

  Oh, my God. What an idiot. Uh, God, it's his name right now is hairy balls. He spells balls, B O L Z, but it's hairy balls. That is his name on Twitter right now.

• 57:40Shaan Puri?

  Oh, Elon, you're so, you're so irreverent.

• 57:44Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, dude.

• 57:46Sam Parr?

  Oh, it's this is too much, man.

• 57:47Shaan Puri?

  These billionaires with senses of humor.

• 57:50Sam Parr?

  They're just like us.

• 57:51Shaan Puri?

  I would love to see what Elon thinks the like other people's reaction is. He must type these in and just sit back and just smirk, just have a smug look on his face. Just imagine, oh, man, the internet's gonna love this. I'm super rich, but I don't take myself too seriously. Look at this.

• 58:10Sam Parr?

  Yeah, next week it's gonna be like, uh, like Elon Baller sixty nine. Like it's just like, uh, this is the lamest thing ever, man. I don't know how, I mean, I guess like, look, when it with extreme personalities comes to extreme success, but they don't tell you there's another end of that bell curve and that's extreme, that's extreme cringe. And and we're experiencing that a little bit right now. I know a lot of billionaires, not a lot, I know a couple billionaires and I know a lot of wildly successful people and they do every once in a while, like you're like, oh, hey, man, you don't know how to hold the conversation appropriately. Let me help you out here. This is kind of what's happening with him. It just so happens that it's in front of one hundred twenty twenty five million followers.

• 58:49Shaan Puri?

  He has like the cringe version of Tourette's, like, dude, just stop. You can't, he can't stop just blurting out these cringey things.

• 58:56Sam Parr?

  Yeah, it's it's ridiculous. He's he, I actually think that he's kind of ruining his legacy for sure here. Like maybe five years ago, he was the man. And he still is the man, frankly, like his accomplishments are amazing, but he's a little less of the man at this point.

• 59:14Shaan Puri?

  There was a funny, funny back and forth. He, uh, somebody tweeted out a, um, a graph of all the billion dollar or a chart of all the billion dollar companies and what industries they're in.

• 59:22Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I saw that.

• 59:24Shaan Puri?

  And, uh, Paul Graham retweeted it and he says, oh, you know, what's interesting here is like, we're clearly like over indexed on like software and like, you know, real world things like hardware or manufacturing. And there's only like a few companies in that bucket.

• 59:40Sam Parr?

  But don't let that hold you back.

• 59:41Shaan Puri?

  Don't, you should still do it. I think there's a lot of opportunity there. And Elon replied and was like, um, yeah, like a complete waste. You know, says something like it was like a big waste of, um, of resources or brain power or talent that that was the case. And then, um,

• 59:59Sam Parr?

  And the the response was the biggest own and I've seen in a week. It was, it was a really good reply.

• 1:00:04Shaan Puri?

  Paul Graham goes, yeah, can you think of anybody right now who's really talented and, uh, and could be doing those things, but is wasting their time on a software project? And it's so good because obviously it's talking about Elon.

• 1:00:18Shaan Puri?

  And yeah, he's like a perfect self, self-owned really by Elon.

• 1:00:22Sam Parr?

  Yeah, it was pretty good.

• 1:00:24Shaan Puri?

  Too good.

• 1:00:25Sam Parr?

  It was good. That was good. I'm a big fan of him, of Paul Grant. I'm still an Elon guy. I think I might get myself a Tesla. But I don't like this. It makes it hard to want to wear like a Tesla T-shirt. That's for sure. Not that he cares, but it makes it challenging to like root for him publicly when he makes these stupid comments.

• 1:00:44Shaan Puri?

  People, people in our comments hate when I make fun of Elon or diss Elon or Chamath or these guys. Cause they're like fans of them, which is totally fair. You can be fans of whoever you want. But I just want to, for the record, I'm out on Elon early. Cause guess what? More and more you're going to be out on this guy over time. And I just want to plant the flag. I'm out on him early because his cringe will eventually wash away all these people or he's going to get canceled for something. I'm telling you, it's, it's going to happen. And I, I would like the record to show that I was out early.

• 1:01:16Sam Parr?

  Dude, these, these people in our comments are crazy to me because why can't someone do a lot of really good stuff and also some bad stuff? Like, why can't like someone kick ass at a, at a ton of different things and make a huge amount of mistakes?

• 1:01:29Shaan Puri?

  Totally.

• 1:01:30Sam Parr?

  Cause whenever we talk about this, we say, yeah, he's, he's the best at a bunch of different things.

• 1:01:35Shaan Puri?

  He's the greatest entrepreneur.

• 1:01:37Sam Parr?

  He's.

• 1:01:37Shaan Puri?

  Of, of, I don't know, the last 30 years, 50 years. That is true. Also true. He's pretty cringe and corny. And disingenuous about some, some things, right? It's also true.

• 1:01:50Sam Parr?

  Yeah. It's like, I can love Michael Jackson's music and also not love what he did, you know? Like both, like both can exist. I can like Chick-fil-A chicken and also not stand by what they, what they stand for. You know, both can be true and I, and I can't stand that with the, with the commenters on our, on our stuff, but we're going to get a reaction on this. I'm eager to see what it is. But, uh, anyway, that's an action-packed pod, I think.